Castrol

Back in 2014, one of Castrol’s global creative agencies approached us with an interesting brief.  Castrol had an expanding product portfolio and needed a way to help their B2B customers (independent workshop mechanics) differentiate between them.

Every Castrol product has a unique product story and we needed to bring this to life through film.  We worked with Jaywing to develop a unique CGI world that was ‘undeniably Castrol’.  A mix of urban and rural environments was created, each of which were white in colour with Castrol red and green road markings.

The vehicle models created were semi-transparent.  This helped us to keep the viewer’s focus on the key component to our story, the engine.

Each short film (<90 seconds) followed an agreed structure: firstly, we’d start of by setting up the ‘problem’ drivers face.  We’d then jump into the engine to see how a given Castrol product addresses this.  As pioneers in technology, Castrol were keen to create visual representations of how each of their products worked at a molecular level.

What started off as a B2B brief was quickly praised by Castrol’s marketing director.  The language and visuals used meant consumers would be able to understand the films, and so the decision was made to roll them out B2C too.  The films are used on Castrol and third-party websites, in sales presentations, on social media and in-store point-of-sale.

Five years (and multiple product launches) later, we have created over 20 ‘PUMA’ films (this was an internal project name given by our client who was particularly fond of military helicopters!).

Over the years, we’ve moved our ‘white world’ on to feature dusk and night time settings, as well as different engine configurations and vehicles (bikes as well as cars!).  As part of the delivery of each project, we include ‘clean’ assets for global translation and roll-out, plus print-resolution still renders for use in broader marketing collateral.